“My husband never spoke to Lapècora. Anyway, when could he have? The guy’s always out. He just doesn’t give a damn.”
“Where is your husband?”
“He’s out, as you can see.”
“Yes, but where does he work?”
“At the port, at the fish market. He’s up at four-thirty in the morning and back at eight in the evening. I’m lucky I ever see him at all.”
An understanding woman, this Mrs. Gullotta.
o o o
On the door to the third and last apartment on the fifth floor was the name piccirillo. The woman who answered the door, a distinguished-looking fifty-year-old, was clearly upset and nervous.
“What do you want?”
“I’m Inspector Montalbano.”
The woman looked away.
“We don’t know anything.”
Montalbano immediately smelled a rat. Could this woman have been the reason Lapècora went one flight up?
“Let me in. I still have to ask you some questions.” Signora Piccirillo gruffly stepped aside to let him in, then led him into a small but pleasant sitting room.
“Is your husband at home?”
“I’m a widow. I live with my daughter, Luigina, who’s unmarried.”
“Call her in here, if she’s at home.”
“Luigina!”
A jeans-clad girl in her early twenties appeared. Cute but very pale, and literally terrified.
The rat smell grew even stronger, and the inspector decided to go on the attack.
“This morning Mr. Lapècora came to see you here.
What did he want?”
“No!” said Luigina, almost yelling.
“He didn’t, I swear it!” the mother proclaimed.
“What was your relation to Mr. Lapècora?”
“We knew him by sight,” said Mrs. Piccirillo.
“We haven’t done anything wrong,” Luigina whined.
“Well, listen closely: if you haven’t done anything wrong, you shouldn’t be afraid. We have a witness who claims that Mr. Lapècora was on the fifth floor when—”
“But why hold that against us? There are two other families living on this floor who—”
“Stop it!” Luigina exploded, in the throes of an hysterical fit. “Stop it, Mama! Tell him everything! Tell him!”
“Oh, all right. This morning, my daughter, on her way out for an appointment at the hairdresser’s, called the elevator, which arrived at once. It must have been stopped at the floor below us, the fourth floor.” “What time was it?”
“Eight o’clock, five past . . . She opened the door and saw Mr. Lapècora sitting on the floor. When I looked inside the elevator—I’d gone out with her to wait for it—the man seemed drunk. He had a bottle of wine, unopened, and, uh . . . it looked like he’d soiled himself. My daughter felt disgusted. She closed the elevator door and started going down the stairs. At that moment the elevator left, somebody downstairs had called it. Well, my daughter has a delicate stomach, and that sight made us both a little queasy. So Luigina went back inside to freshen up, and so did I. Not five minutes later, Mrs. Gullotta came and told us that poor Mr.
Lapècora wasn’t drunk at all, but dead! And that’s the whole story.”
“No,” said Montalbano. “That’s not the whole story.”
“What did you say? I told you the truth!” the woman said, upset and offended.
“The truth is slightly different and more unpleasant. You both immediately realized the man was dead. But you didn’t say anything; you acted as if you’d never seen him at all. Why?” “We didn’t want our names ending up on everyone’s lips,” Signora Piccirillo admitted in defeat. Then in a sudden burst of energy, she shouted hysterically: “We’re honest people!” So those two honest people had left the corpse to be discovered by someone else, perhaps someone less honest. And what if Lapècora hadn’t been dead yet? They’d left him there to rot, to save . . . to save what?
He went out, slamming the door behind him, and found Fazio, who was on his way to keep him company, standing before him.
“Here I am, Inspector. If you need anything—” An idea flashed in his brain.
“Yes, I do need something. Knock on this door. There are two women inside, mother and daughter. Failure to offer assistance. Haul ’em in, and make as much racket as possible. I want everyone in the building to think they’ve been arrested.
Then, when I get back to headquarters, we’ll let ’em go.”
o o o
Upon opening the door, Mr. Culicchia, an accountant who lived in the first apartment on the fourth floor, gave the inspector a little push backwards.
“We can’t let my wife hear us,” he said, standing outside the doorway.
“I’m Inspector—”
“I know, I know. Did you bring me back my bottle?”
“What bottle?” Montalbano asked in shock, staring at the skinny seventy-year-old, who had assumed a conspiratorial air.
“The one that was next to the dead man, the bottle of Corvo white.”
“Wasn’t it Mr. Lapècora’s?”
“Absolutely not! It’s mine!”
“I’m sorry, I don’t quite understand. Explain.”
“I went out this morning to go shopping, and when I got back, I opened the elevator door, and there was Mr.
Lapècora inside, dead. I realized it at once.”
“Did you call the elevator?”
“Why would I do that? It was already on the ground floor.”
“And what did you do?”
“What could I have done, my boy? I’ve got injuries to my left leg and right arm. Got shot by the Americans. I had four bags in each hand. I couldn’t very well have taken the stairs now, could I?” “Are you telling me you came up in the elevator with the body inside?”
“I had no choice! But then, when the elevator stopped at my floor, which was also the deceased’s floor, the bottle of wine rolled out of one of my bags. So I opened the door to my apartment, took all the bags inside, and then came back out to get the bottle. But I didn’t get back in time; somebody’d called the elevator to the next floor up.” “How is that possible if the door was open!”
“But it wasn’t! I’d closed it without thinking! Ah, the mind! At my age one doesn’t think so clearly anymore. I didn’t know what to do. If my wife found out I’d lost a bottle of wine she’d skin me alive. You must believe me, Inspector. She’s capable of anything, that woman.” “Tell me what happened next.”
“The elevator passed by in front of me again and went down to the ground floor. So I started going down the stairs.
When I finally arrived, bum leg and all, I found the security guard there, who wasn’t letting anyone get near. I told him about the wine and he promised he’d mention it to the authorities. Are you the authorities?” “In a sense.”
“Did the guard mention the bottle of wine to you?”
“No.”
“So what am I supposed to do now? Eh? What am I supposed to do? That woman counts the money I spend!” he complained, wringing his hands.
Upstairs they could hear the desperate voices of the Piccirillo women, and Fazio’s imperious commands:
“Down the stairs! On foot! And keep quiet!” Doors opened, questions were asked aloud from floor to floor.
“Who’s been arrested? The Piccirillo girls? Are they being taken away? Are they going to jail?” When Fazio came within reach, Montalbano handed him ten thousand lire.
“After you’ve taken them to headquarters, go buy a bottle of Corvo white and bring it to this gentleman here.”
o o o
Montalbano’s interrogation of the other tenants did not yield any important new information. The only one who said anything of interest was the elementary-school teacher Bonavia, who lived on the third floor. He explained to the inspector that his eight-year-old son Matteo had fallen down and bloodied his nose when getting ready for school. As it wouldn’t stop bleeding, he had taken him to the emergency room. This was around seven-thirty, and there was no trace of Mr. Lapècora, dead or alive, in the elevator.
Aside from the elevator rides he’d taken as a corpse, two things about the deceased seemed clear to Montalbano: one, he was a decent man, but decidedly unpleasant; and two, he was killed in the elevator, between seven thirty-five and eight o’clock.